Doug Coombs had a huge impact on my life; much of my overall approach to mountains comes from his example.
Many believe it was this second chance that inspired the extraordinary Life he led until his tragic death in 2006, the result of an attempted rescue of a fellow skier..
Doctors said it was a miracle he wasn\'t paralyzed, and that another bad fall could kill him.
What most people didn\'t know was that Coombs skied so perfectly in part because he had no other choice--at the age of 16 he crashed off a jump in New Hampshire and broke his neck.
From the slopes of his childhood in New England; to the steep chutes of his early career in Montana and Wyoming; to the deep, avalanche-prone powder of his guiding years in Alaska; and, ultimately, to the terrifying terrain of the French Alps, Coombs\'s greatness was in how he skied.
Now, his story is told for the first time in Robert Cocuzzo\'s Tracking the Wild Coomba .
His place at the top was confirmed in 1991 when he won the very first World Extreme Ski Competition in Valdez, Alaska.
He graced magazine covers, wowed moviegoers, became the face of top ski companies, and ascended as the king of big mountain extreme skiing.
Jimmy Chin, climber-photographer - A thrilling biography of renowned extreme skiing pioneer Doug Coombs Arguably the greatest extreme Skier to ever live, Doug Coombs pioneered hundreds of first descents down the biggest, steepest, most dangerous mountains in the world--from the Grand Teton Otter Body in Jackson Hole, to Mount Vinson, the highest point in Antarctica, to far-flung drops such as Wyatt Peak in Kyrgyzstan.
Now, here is an insightful look at the Life of a legend. - Bruce Tremper, avalanche expert and author of Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain Doug Coombs was an inspiration to me and so many others on and off the mountain.
Robert Cocuzzo accurately captures the amazing Doug and Emily Coombs that I knew then and the myriad of Coombs ski stories. - Jeremy Jones, snowboarding legend In the 1980s, I was lucky enough to be part of the Bozeman gang of ex-ski racers in one of the crucibles of the American steep skiing scene.
I am so grateful that, thanks to author Rob Cocuzzo, I now have the complete story of what influenced one of my biggest heroes.
Doug Coombs had a huge impact on my life; much of my overall approach to mountains comes from his example
